


Out of Service

by Unsentimentalf



Category: James Bond (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-SPECTRE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:05:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James is done with his old employer but it seems someone out there isn't yet done with him.   When an anonymous attack gives him cause to call on his ex-colleagues for help he finds that being on the outside is about more than just an absence of regular payslips.  </p><p>Post Spectre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Boom

Three months after James left the Service, Madeleine left him. 

He wasn’t particularly surprised. It hadn’t been a smooth three months. At first she’d found the heavy drinking amusing, then when it didn’t stop she told him that she found it insulting. Eventually she’d figured out how much of a part of him it was and she’d walked away. He’d known from the start that she was smart and a survivor, that she’d already walked out of one irredeemable relationship and never gone back. There hadn’t been much chance that she would stay. 

He’d wanted her to, though. He didn’t know how to do this ordinary living on his own. James found himself playing at it, working out what he would need to do to live in deep cover as an unemployed ex-assassin. It didn’t feel anything like deep cover. He didn’t stop drinking.

He went to casinos in search of the sex and the money that he didn’t need, took both of them anyway because what other way was there to keep score now? After a couple more weeks walking around as if he was like everyone else he decided that he was tired of pretending to himself that he was something he was not. After that when he went out the familiar comfort of gun metal always pressed against the back of his hip. 

James stalked through London at night, armed, dangerous and purposeless, hunting nothing more exciting than the next drink or the next warm bed. During the daytime he slept, did his laundry, ordered extravagant food online, watched the observers in the street as they watched his door. 

He could go back. They wouldn’t make it easy for him. There were those bloody psych profiles and fitness tests. Last time they’d overruled those because they needed him back, but he wasn’t sure that they still thought like that. He was unreliable, in Service terms, with a habit of leaving and coming back, making up his own assignments, destroying their three million pound prototypes. Drinking too much.

He wasn’t sure that he wanted to go back in any event. James found himself thinking in odd moments about the white cat. If Franz had got out of the explosion, maybe a cat could have escaped. Could a cat survive the desert? Would there be enough lizards and mice to hunt in the ruins of the industrial complex or on those watered green lawns now, presumably, scorched and dead under the heat of the sun? 

Q had said he had cats. Cats and a mortgage. James followed him home one evening, staying well out of sight. Q’s cats weren’t indoor cats; they roamed the tiny London gardens and the square as if they owned the neighbourhood. One was plumply brown and black striped. The other was slender and ink black. He knew they were Q’s when they sauntered home for supper, summoned with the rattle of a fork against a tin can. Q didn’t call their names out loud so James remained in ignorance of something.

He slid out from the alleyway and started for home as they disappeared through a high window. He had no interest in finding out what Q’s life was like, what he did or didn’t do with pretty strangers. He had just wanted to see if the cats were real. 

James was oddly pleased that they were both real and just ordinary cats. They looked as if they would manage in an exploded desert base rather better than the white fluffy one. Not a practical looking animal, that one. Not a survivor type. He didn’t remember Franz liking cats of any sort when he was a child, but then he hadn’t always taken much notice of what Franz liked. 

Franz - Blofeld- was locked up somewhere, his indeterminate detention approved by a secret court in what passed these days for British justice. While he lived the Service had a source of intelligence against the remains of Spectre. While he lived the remains of Spectre had the chance to break him out again. 

James hadn’t been considering either of those, or the spectators, or the child he’d once known when he’d let the man live. He hadn’t been repelled by or tired of the bloodshed. He hadn’t struggled against the urge for revenge, he hadn’t thought about what Madeleine would think of him. For the first time ever he’d felt that he’d become what the 00 designation had always meant to signify, nothing more than an extension of the Service’s will. He killed because they wanted someone dead, he held his fire because they didn’t need him to act. To leave this most personal of enemies alive had been in the end nothing more than part of his job. When that was all that was left of him he’d known that he needed to get out. 

So now he was out and he made his own choices. He’d yet to find one that mattered except the choice to carry on living, and even that was more of an absence of a decision to do otherwise. He was tired of drinking, even more tired of manoeuvring his way far too easily into the beds of strangers, but he couldn’t sit in his flat at night with the TV loud and only memories for company. For years he’d worked and drank and fucked and occasionally played for a while at happy families with women who probably deserved either a great deal better than him or a great deal worse. Now he just drank and fucked. 

It had been yet another slightly blurred night out, finishing earlier than usual. Ann, or Anne- she hadn’t told him which and he didn’t ask- had flirted with him for a while then started to watch other men over his shoulder. When he’d mentioned it she’d shrugged. “I don’t do the pink pill ones, I’m afraid. You’ve got a sweet smile but I’m looking for someone... you know? A bit younger?” 

He’d suddenly become aware that everyone in this club was at least fifteen and mostly nearer to thirty years his junior. Ann/e had smiled at him, stretched up to pat his cheek and moved a few feet down the bar to talk to someone else. James had downed what was left of his drink, walked out and home.

The club had been loud and a couple of miles away from the flat. The first thing he knew wasn’t the explosion but the wailing sirens, lots of them, going his way. He broke into a fast run, thought better of it as his lungs started to ache, hailed a taxi instead. It took him to the edge of the crowd around the police tape, two streets away from home. 

James vaulted the tape, dodged the police and headed up the pavement. As he turned into his road he could see the hole in the side of the building that used to be his apartment. The place was crawling with police and firefighters. An ambulance was drawing away while several more stood waiting. It was two o’clock on a Thursday morning which meant that the other residents of the building would have been at home. At least some of them were probably dead. 

James thought it best not to talk to the police while there was an illegally held weapon stuck in his waistband. The police wouldn’t know anything worth the conversation anyway. If he assumed that it wasn’t the Service that had blown his flat up (though for the moment he probably ought to assume nothing of the sort), he needed to talk to someone with access to real information. He dodged a few more police, ducked back under the tape this time and went to talk to Moneypenny. 

She blinked at him, tugging the red dressing gown closer against the cold doorstep. “Blown your flat up? Just now?”

“About an hour ago I believe. May I come in?”

“I suppose so. Yes.” She moved aside with a gesture of invitation. James glanced into the kitchen as he passed, at the single plate and mug on the draining board. 

“Alone tonight?”

“I was asleep,” she pointed out. “Some of us have work tomorrow. Were you in the flat at the time?”

“Some of us don’t have work tomorrow,” James said lightly. “No.”

“I wonder if whoever set the explosion knew that.”

“They’d have to be rank amateurs to miss my comings and goings. I’ve taken to using the front door instead of the bathroom window. It’s quicker and doesn’t crease my suit.” 

Moneypenny had her laptop in front of her on the dining room table. “Well, the explosion’s all over the news.”

“I could turn a TV on myself, you know, if I still had one. What’s not on the news?”

“Hold your horses,” she said. “I’m getting there. Your address has run up flags everywhere, of course.”

Her phone rang. She glanced at it then at James. “That’s the boss. Are you here or not?”

If the Service had decided to terminate him they wouldn’t have bombed an empty flat. If anyone else could bug a Service phone well enough for Q to miss it then this flat would be under their surveillance and James was probably screwed anyway. “Tell him I’m coming in. Now.”

 

Q was the last to arrive, striding along the corridor and pushing open the glass door to M’s office. For a moment when they were all together it had seemed like old times despite the new setting. Then Q had slid his laptop onto the desk and opened it in one smooth movement, lifting his head just long enough to ask the room in general, “Does Bond still have security clearance?” 

He’d flickered a glance at James from under his lashes as he asked, something -worry? apology? - in his eyes. 

M had frowned briefly as if he regretted having to answer the question. “No.”

“That’s not a problem,” Moneypenny said to Q, the irritation clear. “M can authorise clearance at any time.”

The pause lengthened until finally James stated the obvious. “But apparently he isn’t going to.” 

“No,” M said again. 

“Why not?” Eve demanded. “Bond needs to find out who bombed his flat.”

“No, he doesn’t.” M said. “And I’ve no intention of telling him. I’m not sending a civilian after terrorists.”

“Then,” James asked, quietly, well aware that the other three didn’t need to hear the anger in his voice to know it was there, “what exactly am I doing here?”

“Providing information to the proper authorities,” M said. 

M really could be a pompous prat when he tried. James considered, very briefly, whether there was anything to be gained by staying, and decided he didn’t care if there was. It was 4am and his night so far had been extraordinarily bad. He didn’t feel co-operative. He felt like another couple of drinks. “No I’m not. When you decide on an exchange of information I’m sure you’ll be capable of finding me. I’m done here. I have a bomber to track down. Goodnight Moneypenny. Goodnight Q.” 

He gave the third person in the room a long, cool stare as valediction, turned on his heel and left. Forget the Service for now. He hadn’t got time for playing games with M. He needed to start his own investigation, find some alcohol, some spare clothes and somewhere to stay for a while, though probably not in that order.


	2. Through the Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James tries conducting his own investigation into the explosion without much success. Q's examination of the site is bound to have revealed more, but getting the Service to share information with him isn't simple.

There was a heavy police presence around the bomb site even at night. It didn’t matter. This had been James’ base; he’d had half a dozen ways of getting in and out without using the street. In the absence of one and a half external walls and all the internal ones that had been reduced to two usable methods but that was still one more than he needed. 

He clambered down a pile of rubble into what was left of his bedroom. There were a couple of police officers in the entrance directly below him but they were unlikely see him even if they looked up. He’d come dressed for burglary, all in black. 

There wouldn’t have been much left to steal even if it hadn’t all technically belonged to him anyway. Anything that hadn’t been destroyed was buried under bricks and dust. James prowled around, trying and failing to figure out from the pattern of destruction where the bomb might have been placed. Q would know. 

Q no doubt did know by now. James had seen him visit the site earlier that day. That meant he would have told M what explosives had been used, how much and where they had come from. M might even know who was responsible. 

James turned a couple of bricks over with his foot. There was no information here in any language that he could read, no messages from the bomber. He made his careful way down to ground floor level. 

Walking away from what had been his life and everything he'd owned felt wearily familiar. The few bits he'd kept from Madeleine, the handful of papers from Skyfall, all gone, along with postcards from Moneypenny, a wardrobe of clothes he'd rather liked, a couple of guns he'd kept as back up, a novel he'd been partway through reading, a laptop with nothing at all incriminating on, his passport, an expensive sound system, a couple of thousand in cash and the last message from M- the old M. Some of it might have been stolen before the blast but what had been left behind was burnt or crushed beyond recognition. 

James was feeling remarkably annoyed both with whoever had done this and with everyone who might stand in the way of his getting to that person. He hadn't made any particular attempt to talk to the others who lived in the building except to exchange an occasional civil good day but it had been his business to find out something about them and they were all ordinary and innocent enough. Now three of them were dead and two badly injured because they lived near him and that was another good reason to find the person who had done this and kill them. 

Since he no longer had a licence to kill that last raised certain practical issues. With any luck they'd flee to an easier jurisdiction for getting away with murder, which reminded him that he needed a replacement passport. He missed having a secretary at times like this, missed the way the Service would have found him accommodation, sorted out his missing paperwork, got the police off his back and provided a car as well as that much needed intelligence. 

James had been temporarily between cars when the bomb had gone off. If he bought one now the Service would know the model and licence plate. His credit cards were still working but he was sure every purchase was being tracked. He needed clean cash and lots of it - another problem for the morning. 

He pushed his black sleeve back to check the luminous dial. Three thirty am. That seemed like civilised enough visiting hours. Stepping silently past the sleepy police guard he left the remains of his home, aware that it was yet another place that he had no reason to ever come back to. 

Eve had always been the easiest to get on his side. M would expect him to go there, so James didn't. He briefly contemplated visiting Q and his cats, but that was nearly as obvious a move. Besides, Q's susceptibility to pressure worked both ways. M would doubtless have come down so heavily on the quartermaster already that persuading him to cooperate would require James to do things he really didn't want to do, not unless he was left with no choice. 

At the moment he still had one more option. It took James fifty minutes to walk across London to the address in Kensington. The security here was considerably less obvious but doubtless considerably more vigilant than that at the flat. There were cameras rather than guards at street level but they would be monitored by armed officers close at hand. 

James clambered up to a useful vantage point on a balcony a road and a half away and pulled out the high powered night vision binoculars he’d bought the day before. In ten minutes or so he’d identified five cameras covering the street and the front of the house and was sure there were no more. He dropped down, circled around and shimmied up a drain to a rooftop a hundred yards away to repeat the process with the rear of the house and the high walled garden. Three cameras, this time, one moving, two static.The faint light on the ground floor at the back of the property must be the security room; James could make out what he was pretty sure was the edge of a lit monitor reflected off a window.

Now what? He could probably break into the monitor room faster than they could react but shooting on duty Service personnel without a remarkably good reason would make him persona non grata with pretty much everyone that he might need help from in the future. Cutting the camera feeds would result in an immediate alert which would screw up his plans for a quiet conversation. There was no alternative but to find a route which would get him into the house without being picked up by the cameras. 

James spent another ten minutes scanning the back of the house and the garden until he was sure that he’d got the timings and climb points exact. If it went wrong they’d probably come out and shoot at him but the chances were he would get away cleanly. M would know that he’d tried and failed though, and that was definitely to be avoided if possible. 

He tucked the binoculars in a pocket, checked his gun, thought briefly about the large drink he intended to find for himself once he was inside the house, reapplied the dark make up around his eyes that he’d cleaned off to walk inconspicuously across London, pulled the black scarf further up his face and set off towards the high garden wall through the very slight cover provided by the increasing drizzle. 

Ninety seconds later he was crouched on a wide windowsill around the side of the building three floors up, rather out of breath and with a painfully scraped elbow. There was no alarm system on the window, which struck him as somewhat negligent; he’d point that out later. For now he just jimmied it open, slid inside and pulled it closed again. By the time the moving camera swung back to cover the position there was nothing to be seen. 

James sat on the floor for a few minutes, getting his breath back and listening to the silence in the house. Then he went exploring. He left a layer of thick facepaint on the fluffy towel of the first bathroom that he found. From here on it would be more dangerous not to be instantly recognisable. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a burglar or, worse, an assassin. He’d seen how fast and straight his as yet unknowing host could shoot. 

Someone was snoring a little behind the next door. James left that room for the moment, checked out the others. All empty. He gave the guest rooms a quick inspection. The fairly expensive furniture was relatively Spartan in design, the decor plain. This felt, as James had suspected, like the home of just one man. That didn’t always mean that there was only one man sleeping in it on any particular night of course.

James went down the staircase to take a look around the living room and kitchen. If there had been entertaining going on, it hadn’t involved hot drinks, alcohol or a meal. That still didn’t enable James to be absolutely certain how many people he’d find behind that bedroom door but he’d go with his best guess of one. He poured himself a large tumblerful from the rather good bottle of single malt on the side cabinet, drank it and made his way up the stairs again.

The bedroom door opened silently and James moved inside and into the shadows of the long curtains. The breathing hadn’t changed. An old fashioned clock radio lit the room faintly with pulsating green light. James waited for his eyes to adjust. 

There was a long metal box on the wall to the side of the double bed. It looked like the gun safe required by UK firearms law. Very conscientious. The padlock was closed; probably (and wisely) no loaded gun kept under the pillow then. Assuming that the keys were in the bedside cabinet the gun could be out and loaded seconds after the men below gave the alarm. Given the security around the place that was no doubt thought entirely adequate for personal defence. 

The clock flashed 5:11. James walked closer until he could see the smaller numbers; the alarm was set for six. It was time to start this conversation. He moved closer still until he was looking straight down at the silk pyjama clad sleeper.

There was always something odd about watching people sleep. Lovers, enemies, people he was trying to keep alive; James had watched all of them while they dreamed on, oblivious. Asleep, no-one tried to seduce him or intimidate him or trick him. No-one was trying to convince him that they were beautiful or intelligent or powerful. And while they slept James could reach out to wake them or kill them or simply walk away without them ever knowing how close he’d been.

He just watched. After a few seconds the man stirred, opened his eyes, focussed sleepily on James and froze.

“Good morning, M.” James said. 

“Oh, it’s you.” M said. “For heaven’s sake stop looming over me like that.”

James stepped back a pace. M pulled himself up until he was sitting against the headboard and glanced at the radio. “Where’s my security?”

“Downstairs. They seem to believe that they are guarding your house.”

“Smug bastard,” M said. “Which way did you get in?”

“Second floor window at the back, far left. You need alarms on those windows.”

“I refuse to have any more alarms. Makes the place feel like a prison. Anyway, you’d just have deactivated them. What do you want?”

“I’m a British citizen,” James told him, “I believe I may even have paid tax on occasion, yet as a victim of a terrorist attack I do not feel that I have the full support and assistance of the UK security forces. I think that a complaint to my MP may be in order.” 

“Now that’s not playing fair, “ M said, reaching out for the glass of water by the bed and flicking the side light on as he did so. “The paperwork is horrendous as soon as they get involved.”

“I know.” James said.

“So you’ve broken into my bedroom to threaten me with administration.”

“A great deal of it. There are other people I could complain to as well. Did you know that I’m a member of the FDA?”

“You are?” M raised a doubtful eyebrow. “You hardly strike me as the union type.”

James shrugged. “A rather attractive woman talked me into signing up years ago and I’ve never got round to cancelling it.”

“How nice for you. Breathe a word about current operations to anyone outside the Service and I’ll have you detained indefinitely, civilian or not.” M said pleasantly. “You can share a cell with Blofeld, if you like.” 

“Someone is trying to kill me,” James said, a touch sharper. “Without the information you have I may not be able to stop them.”

“There’s a safe house ready for you with armed guards. You’ll just have to wait it out until we catch them.”

“As well guarded as this one?”

M grimaced. “If you don’t want to stay in London we can get you abroad. I presume you’re capable of outrunning anyone.”

“So civilians are allowed to run by themselves now?” James shook his head. “Not nearly good enough, M. Give me what data you’ve got and I’ll deal with the situation. I promise not to leave an incriminating mess behind.”

“You always leave a mess.” M pointed out. “No, Bond. You chose to leave the Service. If you want our help we’ll keep you alive and out of trouble until this is resolved, but that’s all you get.”

James had gone to some trouble to have this conversation. He wasn’t prepared to leave empty handed. “Let me talk to Q and I’ll leave you to deal with them when I hunt them down. You know I can find them faster than anyone else you’ve got. Before another attack kills more people. ”

“No.” M said. 

“Why not?”

“Because you’re lying. When you find them you’ll almost certainly kill them, and since you’re not an 00 designation any more the consequences would be unfortunate for everybody. Leave it to us.”

Now James was getting annoyed. “Is that the wisest position from which to keep saying no to me, M?” 

“Was that a direct threat, Bond? Really?” M seemed more curious than alarmed. His hands were resting on top of the bedcover.

“As you keep reminding me, I’m not Service any more. My options are limited and my respect for authority appears to have correspondingly diminished.”

“The answer’s still no.”

James narrowed his eyes at the man in the bed, watching the pulse at his neck. “You’re enjoying this.”

“In four hours time I’ve got a budget meeting, then briefing the minister, then two annual assessments and a a hundred pages of memos to read. The only way my heart rate normally goes above 50 these days is if I take the stairs. So feel free to carry on. You’re not tedious yet.”

James hadn’t risked his life (or more accurately his pride) breaking into this house merely to provide an adrenalin rush for a bored ex-soldier. On the other hand he was pretty sure that attempts at merely verbal intimidation would not only fail but be ridiculed. James was in no doubt about how much it would take to break this man and the consequences of thus declaring open war with the Service would be awkward, to say the least.

Sod it. He’d always suspected that it would come down to this in the end, at least after Madeline had left. “If it’s the only way to get anything out of you I’ll come back.”

M flickered a brief smile. “To my bedroom?”

“To the Service.” 

“Ah. That’s...more complicated. I’ll need to give it some thought. I can spare you a few minutes this afternoon. Come around 2pm.” M waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll discuss it then. Now, do you want to upset my security by walking out of the front door or will you go through the window again?”


	3. Cold Out There

Breaking into M’s new office was a great deal easier than breaking into his bedroom. Once James had slipped past the initial security he just strode around the corridors as he always had and everyone he passed assumed that he was meant to be there. He’d never worn his compulsory security pass anyway. 

It was shortly before two when M opened the glass door and stopped.

“Security didn’t tell me you’d arrived.”

“Security doesn’t know.” James closed the desk drawer he’d been looking through and leaned back.

M sighed and closed the door behind him. “Get out of my chair.”

If he rejoined the Service this man would again be his boss. James moved around the desk without protest, settled comfortably and waited. 

M flicked through the entirely unexciting items in the drawer, shut it and locked it with the key that James hadn’t needed to open it. Eventually he looked across.

“So you want to come back?”

“Not particularly, Sir.” James said.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Coming back.”

M’s face didn’t so much as twitch as he considered James. “And after you’ve tracked down whoever blew up your flat will you be engaging in yet another dramatic exit?”

James didn’t blink either. “Probably not, no.”

“Why not?”

“It’s cold out there,” James said. “and I seem to have become institutionalised.”

M frowned at that. “Careful, Bond. Start telling us the truth and you’ll never pass a psych evaluation again.”

James flickered a smile at him. “I’d like to continue to serve my country in the best way that I’m able, Sir. Is that better?”

“You do it so well,” M said.

“The lying or the serving?”

“Both.”

“So I’m back in.”

“No.” M unlocked the drawer on his other side, took out a single sheet of paper and a key and pushed them across the desk. “We can presume you’re being followed. Shake them off then go to this address and keep your head down for a few hours. We’ll meet you there this evening.”

“Another meeting. And will that one be as much of a waste of my time as this and the previous one?”

“I don’t think you’ll find it a waste of your time at all, “ M said. “Now go away. I was already far too busy this afternoon before I found that I had a major security breach in my own building to deal with. Though come to think of it, do you want to come down to the front doors with me and explain to my security how you got in?”

“No,” James told him. “I might want to do it again. Besides, you could doubtless work it out if you tried.”

“Out, then,” M told him. James picked up his piece of paper and left.

He thought that he was indeed being followed but if he was the tail was good enough not to fall into any of the traps James set. Pity; that might have been the easiest way to find out what was behind all this. James walked up to Oxford Street and did some window shopping for pretty electronics to replace his destroyed audiovisual system for an hour or two before dodging his way up and down through Debenhams and a couple of other stores until he was sure that no one following could have no idea where and when he would come out. Then he took three successive taxis to random places, ending up somewhere about a mile and a half away from the address he’d been given and took a leisurely, circuitous and definitely unaccompanied walk to the house. 

James loathed introspection and considered regret the most useless of emotions. Whether you had dodged the bullet or it had hit you, what mattered was staying alive after that. Trying to decide whether or not you should have done something differently was a waste of the attention that, properly applied, might be the only thing keeping you alive. 

Yet as he walked he was still thinking about what he’d said to M. Institutionalised had been a joke, naturally. There was no-one in the Service more independent in operation than a double 0 agent. M- all of the M’s- had grumbled enough times about the lengths to which James would frequently go without bothering to check back with London. Nobody- absolutely nobody- was more capable of operating outside the Service’s resources and constraints. So why was he flirting with management instead of getting on with the job? 

He paused a second at the unexpected thought that generated, camouflaged the pause instinctively as a glance at a woman passing by, then dropped back into the slow stride least likely to draw attention in London, the one that said “I’m on my way home, I’ve walked this way five hundred times before, I’m thinking about the last piece of unfinished work left on my desk and I’m paying no conscious attention to my surroundings.” 

He flirted with everyone. That was all it was. Several more paces covered a few unexciting yards of London pavement. Not everyone, the analytical bit of his brain pointed out. Not Q, for instance, no doubt for very good reasons, none of which he really wanted to go into with himself right now. 

This must be about something else. It had to be. Maybe he really was missing the Service. Maybe he was just missing a drink, and on that thought he found that he really did need one. 

The pubs he’d been passing were full of late afternoon drinkers, workers having a couple of pints with their colleagues while they waited the worst of the rush hour out before scurrying off to trains for the suburbs for the long dull evenings at home. Each tiny premises had half a dozen bar stools and everyone else just stood around, spilling out on the unwelcoming pavement. 

For James this seemed the most pointless of drinking behaviours, an uncomfortable and unsocial preliminary that led to nothing but more standing around an hour or two later on the packed commuter trains. He didn’t fancy fighting his way through to the bar. Instead he pushed open the door of the next convenience store he passed and came out with a bottle of half decent Scotch and, because he was not inclined to think himself the sort of drunk who took his whisky straight out of the bottle on a London street and it never hurt to be prepared for company, a set of four glass tumblers.

The branded plastic bag swung from one hand as James walked the rest of the distance to the address he’d been given, his thoughts divided between the constant automatic vigilance for anyone following him or looking out of place and anticipatory thoughts about sampling the bag’s contents as soon as he reached his destination. For the moment other considerations had left his mind, for which he managed to be vaguely grateful.

The front door of the small ground floor flat was unlocked. James left the bag in the doorway and checked each room, gun ready. When he was satisfied that he was the only person there he retrieved the bottle, locked the front door and sat down at the kitchen table.

By the time the first knock came at the back door he was on glass number three and starting to relax. Gun in hand, he went to answer it. 

“Have a drink,” he suggested when they were back inside. Q gave the bottle a distrustful glance and turned the kitchen tap on instead. James gave the glass of water his own glance of disdain.

“Are we expecting more?”

“Yes,” Q had opened the ubiquitous laptop but when James moved around the table to look he dipped the lid again. “I haven’t yet had the notification of your clearance.”

James shrugged and returned to the other side of the table and another drink. He watched Q work for a while in what felt to him close enough to companionable silence. He supposed that it was a little odd that he should feel no desire to flirt with this undoubtedly pretty young man, not even when it might get him a look at that computer. Mind you, he could think of several ways to incapacitate Q that could get the same result and it seemed that he didn’t intend to use them either. Maybe he really was losing his edge. 

He took another swig to chase off that depressing thought and picked up his gun as a second knock came at the back door. Moneypenny gave him a smile as she came in which faded slightly at the sight of the whisky and even more as she looked around the kitchen. “Is this where you’re staying at the moment?”

James took his own look round. The surprise in her voice was understandable; the kitchen was monstrously ugly. The fake marble worktops, the overwrought cupboard handles, the yellow and blue tiles with artless rustic pictures all looked as if it had been put together with someone with access to too many brochures and no taste whatsoever. 

The glance he’d taken into the single bedroom had been just as bad; acres of purposeless purple cushions. James wondered how much he’d have to revamp the place before he could imagine bringing someone back here. Too much. “No,” he said.

“Yes,” M said from behind Eve. “It’s the only medium term safe house available in London right now. You don’t need to make yourself at home, Bond. Just stay here.”

James gave him a cold look. “I don’t need a safe house. I’m not feeling unsafe, just underinformed.”

“You’re not here to stay safe. You’re here so we can find out how long it takes them to find you.” M nodded at Q. “You might as well fill him in.”

Q looked relieved. “The executive summary- we still don’t know who is after you but we are pretty certain that they are either from inside or getting inside help.”

“Service?”

“Yes.”

That was unexpected. “Why?” 

“Why are they after you, or why are we sure?”

“Either.” James took another swallow of the whisky. 

“Someone’s been accessing your personnel file. They are being quite clever about it too,” Q said with some enthusiasm. “I haven’t been able to trace them back, yet.” He shrugged at James’ raised eyebrow. “I’m treading very carefully. We don’t want to tip them off that their access has been spotted. A bird in the hand, and all that.”

“As to why,” “ M said, “I thought you might be able to help with that. Your attacker either wants to kill an ex-00 agent or he wants to kill you personally. We have no obvious motive for either.”

“It was a deliberate miss,” James said. “And I’ve never met a villain who could keep from threats or gloating this long.” He put down the glass. “My guess is that it’s a shove.”

M nodded at that. “So they want us moving, but in what direction?” He sat down at the table. “Until we know, we should do as little as possible. Stay here. Let us know as soon as any company turns up. How soon that happens may tell us something of where the leak is coming from.”

“If we don’t move, whoever it is might push again,” Moneypenny suggested. “Civilians died last time.”

“Bond was off duty and off guard last time.” M said. “Don’t let them blow up this building. That’s an order.”

“Sir.” James responded dryly. 

There was little more to discuss. James would have preferred to go hunting for his opponents but if M and Q had any more useful information they were keeping it from hm. Eve and Q left the flat together, M lingering behind. 

“Three people are far more conspicuous than two,” he said casually, as the door closed. 

“Indeed.” And M, being the one with authority, could have gone first rather than be left kicking his heels in James’ company. That was interesting. “Drink?” James offered.

“You drink far too much, 007,” M said, pouring himself half a glass. 

“I’m reinstated then?”

“Like past US presidents, the form of address can remain.” M staid starchily. It had been a verbal slip up, then. James wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It wasn’t as if he positively wanted back into the Service. He just couldn’t see a good alternative.

“You’ll have to make a decision eventually,” he pointed out.

“And eventually I will make a decision.” M took a long sip. “You’re the one who walked out. Why did you leave, anyway?”

“None of your business,” James said. 

“It’s the first question the psych evaluation will ask.” 

“And what answer would they like?” 

M shrugged. “Something about seeking personal development and growth always goes down well. Or you could just tell them you were chasing a girl. Sorry about that, by the way. She seemed a nice girl.”

“They always are,” James said. “I’m thinking of giving up nice girls. Round about the same time as I give up dry martinis and fast cars.”

M leaned back in his chair. “You could try a change.”

“Unpleasant boys?” 

“Why stop there? Doesn’t all that endless callow youth get on your nerves?”

“Unpleasant older men, then? I see.” He narrowed his eyes at the other man with a flicker of genuine annoyance. “Is this why you won’t let me back? Service fraternisation rules?”

“The moment that I decide you’re going to be an asset to the service I’ll rehire you, regardless of who you fraternise with.”

“Mixed signals?”

“I’m sure with your extensive experience you can sort them out.”

James sat back and considered. Despite what many in the Service believed, he didn’t have sex with absolutely anyone attractive who crossed his path, but the exceptions tended to be few and far between. It was an easy hit, like drinking. A lot like drinking. He liked to think of himself as a connoisseur of fine alcohol, but if someone locked him in a room with a bottle of cooking sherry and one of water he’d know which one would run out first. 

M wasn’t cheap sherry. More like the Scotch they were drinking, smooth and strong and not anything like James’ usual tipple. James didn’t need to be drinking neat whisky; it would be easy enough to go out into the city and find a well stocked bar and someone to mix him a perfect cocktail, but in the end it was the kick in the back of the throat and the buzz that he drank for. That was the same whether he was gliding through a bar of beautiful people or sitting at a kitchen table drinking from cheap tumblers with the head of the Service. 

He smiled at himself. That was a bloody long metaphor and he was no wiser at the end of it. 

What the hell. This was no time in life to develop a moral compass. “You’re at least four shots behind,” he told M. “Either we’re both sober or neither of us is.”

M reached over to the bottle and topped up his glass to the brim. “That’s my limit,” he said. “Priorities, regrettably. I have a country to keep safe in the morning.” 

“Aren’t you going to be fun?” James muttered.

“When was the last time you slept with someone sober?” M asked.

“It happens more frequently than you’d imagine,” James retorted. He thought about it for a moment. “Generally the morning after I’ve slept with them drunk.” 

“You’re getting into a rut, James.”

“And you’re going to un-rut me? Are you doing it for the Service, Sir?”

“I am the Service, “ M said cheerfully. “The work-life balance can be pretty dire but there are compensations.” His smile this time was straight at James.

For a moment James considered telling the man to take his damn intervention and get out, but he couldn’t see his way to getting anything that he wanted that way.

“I trust you remembered to kill the internal surveillance cameras, or you might be explaining your heterodox interpretation of your Service duties to the Home Secretary in the morning.” 

“Q’s on it,” M said comfortably. “And no, he doesn’t know why. He might guess, of course. From 9am tomorrow morning they are back on, I’m afraid. I hope it doesn’t cramp your style too much while you’re here.”

“Not as much as the decor is going to. Shall we go and admire it?”

M swept the half empty glass up from the table with a grace that James was for the first time conscious of noticing. How long had he been aware of the physicality of this man? Probably since seeing him with a gun in his hand, when he’d gone up rather rapidly in James’ perception, from bureaucrat to player. 

The man’s aptitude for shooting straight and without hesitation probably wasn’t a good reason to bed him, but since when had James needed a good reason? He’d already given this more thought than he could remember applying to any similar decision for years. It was only sex. No problem, or at least none past the need to think of something else to call the man. He’d be damned if he was going to be caught murmuring “M” in the throes of passion. James picked up the near empty bottle and followed his ex boss into the hideously decorated bedroom.


	4. Show Me Yours

James stood at the bedroom door. “It’s not even cheap,” he said. “Just hideous. As head of the Service aren’t you held responsible for atrocities committed on your watch?”

M smiled slightly. He sat down on the tri-coloured silk purple bedspread and started to untie his laces. “A few years back an enterprising person in Housekeeping decided to save time and effort by refurbishing three London safe houses at once. She put the purchases through different shell companies, of course, but an even more enterprising Ikea deliveryman noticed that he was delivering three identical sets of furniture and goods down to the shade of the table napkins to three different houses under three different names on two consecutive days.”

That was the sort of admin error that led to disaster, James thought. “Did we lose anyone?”

“Fortunately the delivery man just reported the matter to his manager who reported it to the police who logged the addresses on their system and we promptly came down on everyone concerned like a ton of bricks. But if you were hoping for a tasteful Service in house style you’re out of luck. This looks like this because it doesn’t look like any of the others.”

He pushed one black shoe off and started on the other. “Close the curtains, will you?”

James glanced out at the windowless gable end opposite and the quiet road below. Not easy for anyone to watch without being seen unless they had good equipment. Someone in the Service might have access to that equipment, of course. He tugged the flowery lilac curtains across, noting without surprise that their weight was rather heavier than their appearance would suggest, and took the other side of the bed so that he could disarm.

“Tell me you didn’t take all that through my security earlier?” M was shaking his head at the gun and two knives on the bedside cabinet.

“What security would that have been?” James retorted. In fact he hadn’t taken them to the office. He had been quite sure that he could dodge the ID checks but not the ubiquitous metal detectors and he’d never liked the feel or the handling of carbon composite weapons. He’d stashed them all and gone weaponless into the MI6 building, picking them up on his way out.

Given what he knew now that had been remarkably foolhardy. Someone had seen his personnel records. Hell, even he hadn’t seen his personnel records, though he now thought he ought to rectify that as soon as possible. If his problems were coming from Service then no-one from there could be trusted, not even the man now sliding that spotted silk tie through his fingers and hanging it up neatly over the brass rail at the end of the bed. 

If M was untrustworthy then that was going to be a major problem for James, the Service and the country in general. They’d barely survived the last problem with corruption in senior management. On the other hand, that very slight frisson of doubt certainly made what James was about to do much more interesting, and that was no doubt another indication of just how screwed up he was right now. 

It also gave M another motive. James knew that many people didn’t seem to need much of a reason to go to bed with him but he doubted that the Head of Service was merely indulging a physical attraction and there were surely other ways of carrying out a psychological assessment on an ex-employee.

“So what would you prefer? Mallory? Gareth? Hey you? Or just Sir, perhaps?” He unbuckled the shoulder holster, running his thumb over where the brand new leather had been rubbing a little. Having his flat blown up had been bloody inconvenient. 

M had lain back amidst the horrible scatter cushions to unbutton his shirt. “You’re rejecting a long standing Service tradition?”

“Sir it is then, “ James said. He was not going to call the man M, not here. He watched the fingers at work uncovering the lightly haired chest with a stab of genuine arousal.

“Mallory then I suppose,” M conceded, apparently amused. “I haven’t been called Gareth by anyone but my mother for decades.” 

Now that was interesting, if true, and even more if he was lying about it. Plenty of people called James by his first name and most of them were women. Admittedly he was a few years younger than M- than Mallory- and not unlucky enough to have been named Gareth. 

If the man had come up through the Service at his age there would be a wife or ex-wife somewhere or he’d have failed every security clearance going during the 90s. Confirmed bachelors back then were not given state secrets to protect. But Mallory had been military and the military had been rather less obsessed with blackmail opportunities. If he’d been good, and from every report James had seen he had been very good indeed, he would merely have had to be discreet. James thought that this man could probably have managed that.

So no wives, ex or otherwise. If there was a regular boyfriend (and the world had changed enough that one would have been permitted these days provided he passed the vetting) he hadn’t left a trace in that cold house. Not just single but probably alone.

James looked back at Mallory and froze for a second before realising that he’d done so. “Sorry,” he said contritely. “I’m usually on the other end of that particular impoliteness. Impressive, though. Is there much more of it?”

Mallory raised a hand to the bullet wound in the shoulder. The three white scars on his stomach were shrapnel, the line across his forearm from blocking a knife. “You’ll see soon enough. I’ve managed to avoid any knives in the back though.” 

“Bloody personnel records.” James muttered. “Do they have full colour photos or just a list of identifying marks?”

“The information didn’t come from your field reports, anyway,” Mallory said. “They seemed to be remarkably silent about that particular incident.”

“It really was of no operational importance,” James said. An inch further down and she’d have killed him but not for any reason that the Service needed to know about. Just another scar. 

“Show me,” Mallory suggested. 

“You’ll show me yours if I show you mine?” James said. It seemed a reasonable enough proposition. He took his shirt off and turned his back on Mallory, not without a prickle of wariness and his hand hovering close to the knife on his bedside table. He had been certain that M hadn’t brought a weapon into the room with him but it was quite possible that the ex SAS soldier might be able to kill him with his bare hands, so he angled himself so that he could see the man’s hands reflected in the wardrobe mirror. Mallory looked straight at James’ reflection and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re rather tense.” His fingertips stroked over the wrinkled skin of the knife scar, then across to James’ shoulders, fingers digging in pleasurably. 

“Someone appears to be trying to kill me,” James pointed out. “And you’ve apparently brought me here as bait so they can try again. I have been stabbed in the back once, as you so perceptively noticed, and I’m not keen on it happening again.”

“If I needed to have one of my ex 00 agents executed I can think of dozens of easier ways to do it than to blow up his flat and then seduce him. Less collateral damage, too.” His touch roamed over James’ back, warm and definite. “Q and Moneypenny can be entirely relied on. No-one else will have had time to track you down yet. Relax. I’d suggest you have a drink but in your case that advice is probably superfluous.”

James glanced over at the half empty bottle that he’d left on the table with only a brief pang of desire. He didn’t need another drink; he needed something to do with his hands. Twisting around onto his knees, he faced Mallory, sliding his right hand up the hard chest and round into the short hair lying on the back of his neck to pull him into a kiss. His other hand started to work Mallory's expensive leather belt loose from its buckle. 

He could feel Mallory's fingers tight in his own hair now, warm tongue pushing back at him in a way that was neither yielding nor aggressive but just what he had needed to arouse him further. As he worked the man's flies loose Mallory pulled away from the kiss. 

"Bathroom, " he said his breathing noticeably faster. "Condoms and lube in the cabinet."

James slid off the bed and went to fetch them. "Pass on my compliments to Housekeeping," he said. "Their taste in decor might be execrable but they do at least have their priorities right." 

"Wouldn't do to have agents assassinated when they pop out to the chemist," Mallory agreed. While James had been out he had finished undressing, incidentally giving James a view of his remaining scars. Discussion of those would wait, James decided, shedding the last of his own own clothes and moving to face him again. Mallory’s hands tightened on his shoulders and pulled them both down to the bedcovers. 

For a few minutes neither of them felt the need to say anything more. Eventually Mallory lifted his head from a reddened nipple to grin at him, his hand still moving slowly along James’ erection. "Is this where we need to negotiate our relative dominance?”

James thought about it for a second and decided that that sort of negotiation could go wrong very easily and besides he rather liked the novelty of not being the one doing the screwing. "Oh, I cede your seniority without a quibble, " he said lightly. "As far as I can see you've got a bloody awful job; getting to screw your subordinates must be one of the few perks." 

"You're not technically my subordinate, " M reminded him. "But I'll take the offer nonetheless." He knelt up so that he could lean over to the table for the lubricant and James lay back to admire the view; hard muscles and scars and balls pulled tight by a very solid erection. Not a delicate curve or patch of soft skin in sight. Scotch, not cocktails and right now he couldn’t remember why he ever bothered to drink anything else.

 

“Ah, God, yes!” Some long time later James flung his head back on the stupid cushions and Mallory waited out the convulsion then slid up the bed to join him. For a while they lay silent, hips pressing against each other as they both contemplated the ceiling and caught their breaths again.

“Did you get what you wanted?” James asked finally.

“And what do your other casual partners say to that?”

“I don’t need to ask my other casual partners, “ James said. “I generally know why they were in bed with me in the first place.”

“I see,” Mallory said. “Yes, then, substantially.” He pushed himself up. “My security will be close to suicidal by now. Do you mind if I take the shower first?”

James waved a hand towards the bathroom without lifting his head. “Be my guest.” He found himself rather more fatigued than a couple of hours in bed would normally leave him but Mallory was probably in better overall condition than he was despite the few extra years and the desk job and he’d had rather more definite and interesting ideas about James’ role in the activity than merely expecting him to lie back and take it. 

What did ‘substantially’ mean, he wondered. He was still wondering about that when Mallory emerged from the shower and started to dress. 

“Don’t break silence or leave the house unless you definitely spot your surveillance.” Mallory said to him as he refastened his belt. “This is our best chance of getting information and I know damn well you can run a perfect lay low operation when you choose to - don’t screw it up just because you get bored. Whoever is after you is good enough that you won’t be here more than a few days. And don’t shoot anyone in central London. You don’t have an 00 designation right now and the paperwork is quite tedious.”

“You could rectify that,” James pointed out. 

“I could. I’m not going to. Just stay here, Bond and stay alert. There’s alcohol in the larder because I doubted if you’d stay here without it, but try not to drink it all. The last attack on you might have been a deliberate miss but there’s no guarantee they won’t change tactics.” 

“Yes, Sir.” James said with dry sarcasm, but M seemed to just take it as his due. 

“Someone will be around to see you, probably tomorrow. It if isn’t Q or Moneypenny then I didn’t send them.” 

“What if it’s Housekeeping come to replenish the condoms?” James asked. “I might need some more.” 

“I’ll be sure to advise the other two that they should bring their own, “ M said without a hint of a smile. “No-one else sets foot in the house. Just follow orders for once, Bond. It’s our best chance of keeping you alive and finding the bastards who killed your neighbours.” He finished lacing his shoes and walked downstairs to retrieve his coat. “Goodnight.” And he strode out through the back door without a backward glance.

James checked the house and the views of the street through every window and door. Satisfied, he took his own shower, retrieved the bottle of whisky and lay down naked with it and a tumbler on the lilac and purple bedspread with the scent of sex still strong in the room. What the hell had that been about, he wondered, and what were the chances of it happening again? He poured himself another glass of Scotch and drank it, slowly, as the noises of the London evening filtered through the lead lined curtains. He’d stay here tonight at least, but once the Scotch was gone, he thought all bets might be off.


	5. Deliberate Miss

Moneypenny slipped into the alley behind the yard without leaving a ripple in the sparse late afternoon crowd.  She was good, James reflected, too good for admin, as he checked that no-one else in the street had paid any attention then tweaked the curtains closed and came downstairs.

“Everything all right?” she asked as she slung a bag onto the kitchen table.

“Since M left everything has been merely tedious.”  He raised an eyebrow at the inner bag of clothes.  “Planning to stay over?”

“Orders,” she confirmed.  “M’s worried about you getting lonely. I hope the sofa’s comfortable.” 

More worried about James walking out, he thought, and was about to say so when an object from the bag chased all other thoughts out of his mind. “Is that yours?”

“Afraid so.”  Eve checked the small gun and slid it into a waist holster. 

“Well that’s it. Now I know he wants me dead,”  James said.  

“Not funny,” She frowned at him.  “This was really not my idea.  You know how I feel about the bloody things.  But he won’t let anyone else know where you are so it had to be me.”

“Have you actually shot at anyone or anything since you shot me?”

“Two hours on the range this morning under M’s personal instruction, no less.” She shook her head.  “Half a dozen crises as ever and he finds two hours for gun practice just like that.  He’s absolutely serious about providing you with protection, James, so I have to be too, however much you laugh.”

James wasn’t laughing, he was thinking. M might have told him not to shoot anyone but he’d also made no attempt to confiscate his thoroughly illegally held gun, so obviously use of it wasn’t completely off the agenda. It seemed to him that the presence of a bona fide Service agent with a legally issued firearm would make M’s job of explaining everything to the politicians a great deal easier should there be shooting and bodies on a quiet London street, particularly if no-one took too close a look at the calibre of bullets in the corpses. 

Two hours’ practice might be enough to get Moneypenny used to squeezing the trigger again without freezing but it wouldn’t make her confident enough to take down a target in a crowd of civilians, if indeed anything could.   She wasn’t his protection, she was his fall guy. 

So why hadn’t M just given her the gun and told her exactly why she had it and why she shouldn’t use it?  Eve was brave and utterly loyal- she might not have liked being the cover for James’ illegal actions but she’d have done it. No need for the Head of the Service to cancel meetings to spend time on the range, no need for James to figure out some way of keeping her safe while she thought she was the cavalry. 

“I’ll try to keep out of your line of fire,” he said.  “Did you bring anything for supper or shall I order a take away?”

“Not on your life!” she said more cheerfully.  “Absolutely no phone calls and no deliveries. I brought burgers and salad. Even you ought to be capable of grilling a burger.” 

The burgers were done to perfection.  Moneypenny had managed not to frown when James had opened one of the bottles of dry Martini and dug out the ice from the freezer, and he had managed not to drink too much of it while she was in the room.  Either M had been lying about expecting James to stay for only a few days or he was massively overestimating James’ drinking habit; there were well over ten days worth of bottles waiting, though James suspected that if he’d been left alone with nothing to do they might not have lasted half that long.

He wasn’t sure that he liked having his alcohol supplied for him as if he couldn’t do without it.  He didn’t need to drink, he just did it. If he had more to do he might drink less, of course, but he couldn’t help remembering that that had been what he had told Madeleine and it hadn’t happened. 

By late evening James had set up the electric wires that Eve had brought from Q over all the windows and doors. The previous night he had slept like a baby but he didn’t intend to leave the house unwatched again. 

“I'll change the sheets and move a few bits out of the bathroom and then you can have the bedroom. I’ll wake you up in six hours.”

“Change the sheets?” She smiled at that.  “Very domestic. I can do that myself.”

Not with the state that James vaguely recalled having left them in, she couldn’t.  He rather thought there might still be an empty condom packet along with the scotch bottle somewhere in there.  “Let me keep the last traces of my mysterious masculine allure intact,“ he said. “I’ll be down again in a minute.”

Six hours passed slowly, uneventfully and with only another couple of drinks to keep James company.  He woke Moneypenny without more than a couple of words exchanged and crashed out, still dressed, on top of the bed.  When she woke him in turn it was daylight.  

Moneypenny had brought a couple of packs of playing cards and chips with her, prompted she said by M, who claimed to have done his share of dull stake outs.  They retreated from the kitchen to the slightly less garishly decorated sitting room, played poker and drank tea for a couple of hours. James was watching Eve riffling the cards neatly and vaguely wondering how bored she’d have to get with playing cards before she’d sleep with him when there was an metallic rattle from the kitchen. They both jumped up to see a ladder blocking the kitchen window and James just caught sight of a boot disappearing upwards. 

“Stay down here, ” he told Moneypenny. “And please to God confirm your targets before shooting!”  Just two hours practice after years neglected- he was tempted to take the gun away from her for his own safety but there was hers to consider too. 

As he reached the door of the bedroom he saw a face looking in through the window. He barely registered the man's logk of surprise before there was a loud electronic squeal and the face disappeared. A second layer there was a huge clatter. 

Outside a body in overalls sprawled dead, unconscious or faking next to a fallen aluminium ladder in the small back yard,  Nothing else in sight.  James ran downstairs to where Moneypenny was standing at the kitchen window, gun in hand.

"Oh my God. We've killed a window cleaner!" She was staring at the overturned bucket and the suds sprayed across the grey concrete. 

"A remarkably antisocial window cleaner. He didn't bother ringing the bell first and I'm presuming you didn't leave the back gate unlocked.”  James turned the electric wire at the kitchen door off. "Watch him and the yard while I check the rest of the house. If he starts to move open the door and shoot him but try to miss anything vital. If he's still alive I'd rather like to talk to him."

The man in his mid twenties appeared to be alone. When they had carefully earthed the body and then dragged him still unconscious into the kitchen they found severe burns all the way up his right arm.  Q's wires had been set to give non-lethal shocks but they hadn’t accounted for someone touching the frame with a wet crowbar in his hand nor the fall from the first floor that had resulted.  His breathing was fast and shallow, his pulse getting fainter and James thought he was unlikely to come round any time soon without medical attention. 

"We should call it in," Moneypenny said. 

"Drag M out of one of his meetings to say that we've acquired an unconscious window cleaner? What do you expect him to do about it?" 

"Send a medic," Eve said practically. "If this guy dies on us we're back to square one." 

"A body can always tell us something, whatever state it's in."  James said. Still he did want to speak to this one.  “Call Q." 

"Who is not a medic," Moneypenny pointed out. 

"Tell him to bring one."

"M was very specific. No-one else is to be brought into this without his clearance. Come on, James. We call the boss and he makes the call on this one. Why won't you do it by the book for once?" 

"Because there are too many things that M isn't telling us."

Moneypenny shook her head. "Heavens, James!  You do know that as head of MI6 he doesn't actually have a security clearance, not one with an official designation? I'm his secretary, my clearance is higher than Q's and every day M's dealing with matters that I'm not allowed to even know exist. And right now you don't have a clearance at all.  Of course he's not telling us everything. She never told you everything either, did she?"

"She told me enough to let me carry out my assignments," he said. "There are matters he's withholding information on right now that I need.”

Eve had a hand on her hip now as she tilted her head to glare at him.  "You don't have an assignment, Bond! Someone blew up your home and killed your neighbours but your very good reasons to track them down aren't the reasons why the Service is running this operation. There are national security issues involved and you're not M's agent any more. I am, and I need to do my job."

She tapped at her phone and put it to her ear. It was answered almost immediately. "We've got a visitor, he hurt himself on one of the house decorations and needs some TLC."

James stood back, frowning. She offered the phone to him. "He wants a word."

"Yes?" 

"Have you been disturbing the neighbours?" M's voice came over. 

No gunshots. "They won't have heard a sound."

"Are you expecting anyone else?"

"You know how it is, sometimes they just turn up anyway." 

"Indeed," M said.  "Well, our old friend plans to drop by shortly, with his girlfriend in tow.  Look out for them, won't you?." 

The phone clicked off.  "He's sending Q and a medic,"  James said, "and he says that he'll like us not to shoot them. When you go back to being his secretary you might point out that unnecessary micromanagement of experienced field agents is the sign of a petty bureaucrat."

"Insulting the boss has always been your prerogative,"  she said. "I have to work with him." 

 

“Another deliberate miss,” Q said thoughtfully.  They were sitting in the kitchen watching through the glass door as the paramedic worked in the living room. 

“Are you sure it was deliberate?”  Eve asked. 

“He props a rattling aluminium ladder up against the kitchen window and climbs it in heavy boots carrying a crowbar and a cumbersome pail of water.  No other weapon. Presumably we are meant to believe that his intention was to jack the window open,  climb through, search the house for one of Europe's most experienced professional killers and ask Bond to please stand still while he bludgeoned him to death."

“So he expected the house to be empty.” Moneypenny conceded.” Could he just have been an opportunistic burglar?” 

“A burglar would have tried the ground floor," James said. "Easier, far less conspicuous and he'd have had a line of retreat if the house had been occupied. I imagine that whoever sent this chap to break in here told him the house was empty and only the ground floor alarmed.  Someone set him up to fail.” 

“And to die in the attempt?” she asked. 

James shrugged. "They couldn't have been certain he'd die, which means that they think whatever he can tell us is only what they don't care about us knowing." 

That was frustrating.  It didn't mean that they were right though. What it did mean was that they knew he was here, which made staying pointless.  He wasn't going to be shifted into another safe house to repeat the process. He was tired of being bait. 

The medic came to stand at the door and he rose to open it. 

"I have to get him to hospital " she said.  “He needs operating on urgently. It's likely that he's got a blood clot on the brain from the fall but a scan will confirm it. He also needs urgent skin graft for the burns.” 

“Will he live?” James asked.

She frowned at him. “I'd give him 50/50 odds dropping all the time we're standing here talking.”

“I’ll handle this,” Moneypenny said from beside him. “There are protocols. You need to get out of here.”

“Tell M that the result of his experiment is rather less than 24 hours and I’ve no intention of repeating it,” James said to Q.   “Until he finds his leak I’ll be booking my own accommodation.” 

Q nodded soberly. It must be obvious that any safe house the Service had to offer wasn’t remotely safe right now.  “How do we contact you?”

“You don’t. I won’t be out of touch for long.”

 

“You need to do something about that window,” James remarked.

M looked up from his laptop in the small upstairs study. “And put you to the inconvenience of finding another way in? Sit down. I’ll be done in a minute.”

James helped himself to a brandy from the decanter on the sideboard and watched M work, which he considered rather less interesting than watching him sleep had been. He’d barely finished a quarter of the glass when M closed the laptop lid and looked across at him.

“Your window cleaner is a twice convicted housebreaker called Ken Jones. He’s still in intensive care but I pulled rank and talked to him briefly.”

“You’ve got the time to do your own interrogations now?”

“Of course I don’t have time,” M said, rather irritably. “Why do you think I’d doing paperwork at one in the morning? Unfortunately there are only two people in the department that I’m willing to trust in this matter and their combined skill set, though remarkable, doesn’t happen to include interrogation. Do you want to know what he said or not?”

“Do go on.”

“He was hired to by a non-existent businessman to recover some papers regarding a non-existent land deal from the non-existent safe in your living room. He was told that the house would be empty and that the ground floor doors and windows were alarmed. He didn’t know you from Adam and he clearly wouldn’t have been any threat to you even if he’d got inside undetected so what the hell our opponent thinks they have to gain by sending him I have no idea.”

M stood up and poured a little brandy into the second glass. “I’ve got someone looking into that side of things but there’s a firewall between them and the rest of the investigation.”

“So how did our opponent find me?”

“That is very much the question,” M agreed. “There’s no indication that the safe house network data has been accessed and none of the other houses have had any activity around them. It’s remotely possible that the leak came from there but my guess was that one of us was either physically followed or electronically traced.” 

He sighed. “That meant another meeting postponed while Q checked me over; it really hasn’t been a good day for my in-tray. Since I doubted that you'd want to come in for your turn, Q lent me a piece of kit that should do the job here.“ He stood up and James followed him and the laptop next door to the bedroom. There he gave James a slight smile. “I'm going to need you to take your clothes off.”

"Are you indeed, Sir? "

M crossed to a large case standing by the bed. "Now, 007, if you don't mind?" 

Since he appeared to be serious, James did as he was told. By the time he was naked M had extracted some kind of hand scanner and connected it to his laptop.  "Stand there." 

"I don't have a tracer," James said.  "When would anyone have had a chance to plant one?" 

"If I find anything we can discuss that."  M was keying his way through a series of screens.  "Why Q can 't write this stuff in English I don't know -  hang on, that should do it. Keep still while I run this over you.” 

"I've heard worse suggestions in the way of foreplay," James commented, "but not much." 

'Try to be quiet, " M said." This is going to take long enough already without the flirtation and I have a meeting with a Parliamentary select committee in a few hours.  You're not the only pain in my neck right now."  He started to run the scanner slowly across James' scalp and them downwards. 

The laptop beeped sharply. M glanced at the screen, moved the scanner back and forth a few times, tapped on a few keys and finally pressed down with his finger on a spot on James’ shoulder. “Like to tell me what’s under here?”

“Flesh, blood and passion,” James said. “Also a small souvenir from Cuba 2003.”

“You could have mentioned it previously.”

“I wanted to see if your machine was working. Carry on.” 

After that he’d not expected the scanner to find anything else so he’d stopped paying a great deal of attention to the computer side of things. The slow scrape of the scanning device across his skin was rather erotic, given who was doing the scraping and James didn’t make much of an attempt to quell his reaction. He was luxuriating in the push of the foam pad against his buttocks and contemplating the best way to persuade Mallory to give up a little more of his sleep for sex when the laptop beeped again. 

M reset the machine and scanned the area again with the same result. “Anything you already know about under here?” His fingers circled a patch on James left buttock, a bare inch away from the base of his spine. 

“No.” James couldn’t twist around enough to see it clearly. 

M prodded it, then the same area on the other side. “There’s definitely something embedded in there, and a small mark on the skin.”

James pushing his hand away so that he could do his own prodding., There was indeed a detectable lump. “Knot in the muscle?”

“It’s registering part metallic,” M said.

Fuck. “Get it out.”

“You’ll need anaesthetic.”

“No I won’t. Get it out now or I’ll dig it out myself.”

M looked at his expression and sighed. “Stay here then while I get what I need.”

James sprawled naked face down on M’s bed and contemplated the irony of getting exactly where he’d wanted to be. Beside the bed M had arranged towels, bowls, clothes, a bottle of antiseptic, a sharp scalpel and tweezers. The brandy was close to hand. 

“This is going to hurt,” he said. “Can you manage not to scream? The guards are downstairs.”

“I’ll be silent. Just don’t take your time over it,” James said. “Rip the damn thing out. I heal fast enough.”

 

Something clattered into the steel bowl and James finally let out a breath. “All of it?”

“I wasn’t going to poke around to make sure. Should be enough to stop it working anyway. Get checked out with the medics tomorrow. Hold still again. Antiseptic.”

James gritted his teeth yet again against the new wave of agony and thought about retribution against whoever who had apparently been screwing him around more and for longer than he’d imagined. The pain receded a little and he hissed his way through M’s deft cleaning of the wound and the application of a patch. 

A glass of brandy was pushed into his hand and he drank it straight off despite the awkward position then dropped it and reached out again. “Let me see it.”

M patted the object clean of James’ blood and passed it over. It was a chip a centimetre or so long. Hard to believe he hadn’t noticed it despite its careful placement. 

“Any idea what it does?” he asked. 

“I could guess,” M said, “but I don’t have to. If I’m not getting any sleep tonight why should anyone else?” He had picked up his phone. 

After a few rings there was a slightly bleary “Yes?” from the handset.

“I’m sending you a few pictures,” M said. “From about a centimetre and a half under the skin. I want your best guess of functionality in under five minutes. ”

“Yes sir!” Q sounded immediately more awake. James watched as M took close up photos of the chip’s wiring from every side and sent them on. 

“Could your phone be traced back to here?” he asked. An idea was very slowly starting to coalesce in his head, not much helped by the pain.

“According to Q, not a chance.” M put the phone down and sat down by the bed. “Now, while we’re waiting to find out what that is, what can you tell me about how it got there?”

It seemed fairly obvious that someone he’d had sex with had given him something to knock him out, doubtless after he’d drunk too much to be paying proper attention and then inserted the chip, maybe with one of the devices that vets used to microchip cats. James found himself quite annoyed about that, particularly since if he could guess that much so could M. 

“I don’t know who and I don’t know when,” he said. “I recall noticing a bit of a sore patch for a couple of days; might have been nine days ago, more or less.”

“For God’s sake, Bond! Are you saying that you can’t remember who you’ve slept with in the last two weeks?” M said. 

James shrugged. “Some people are more memorable naked than others. It would have been a girl that I met at a club, and she probably would have been attractive. And she would doubtless have had a name, though it wouldn’t necessarily have been her real one, and a phone number that I wouldn’t have kept.” 

He half smiled at M’s expression. “Even if I could remember which one it was I couldn’t give you enough to let you trace her. Forget the girl. I can give you something far more useful.”

The phone rang back. “Hold that thought,” M said to him and answered it. 

“No surprises. It’s a tracer,” Q said. “Beautifully miniaturised; it will probably run for about two weeks with a range of half a mile or so. I can tell you more when I get my hands on it.”

“That will do for the moment,” M said. “I’ll pass it over tomorrow.”

“One moment,” James took the phone. “What’s the easiest way to block its signal now without making your job tomorrow more difficult?” 

“Put it in a thick metal box,” Q said. 

“Thanks.” He handed the phone back to M, who rang off. “You might want to stick this in your gun safe as a matter of urgency,” he suggested. “And make sure your guards are fully alert.” 

M unlocked the safe and put the wrapped chip next to one of the three guns, then made a call downstairs. “Isn’t this locking the stable door rather?” he suggested.

“It might be. It depends how lucky they’ve been. Half a mile range means that every time they lose me there could be many hours of driving around before they pick it up again. They didn’t find me last time I came here, but then I wasn’t here for long.”

M was on his feet now, frowning down at James. “How can you be sure that they didn’t trace you here?”

“Because they needed to keep screwing me around until I came here again.” He laughed at M’s stunned expression. “Hadn’t you figured out that you’re the target here? No-one’s going to go to all this trouble just to piss off an ex-agent.” 

He could see it all now. “They set an explosion to flush me out with enough deaths to make you take it seriously, they made enough subtle noise from inside the Service to put the office out of bounds and they used the tracer to find me and set up a second deliberate miss to get me out of the safe houses. I suspect if I’d gone to Q or Moneypenny something unpleasant would have happened there too. They wanted me to liaise with you here and only here. "

“Why would they want that?” M said sharply.

“Because they want this address and they don’t want anyone to know that’s what they are after. It’s a fair bit harder to get hold of than mine.” He smiled up at M. “You might consider just putting it in your personnel file next time. It would save me a lot of trouble.” 

“Save you trouble?” M considered him for a moment, face cold. “You seem very pleased with yourself.” 

Yes he was. James finally felt ahead of this particular game. “The chip’s neutralised. We know what they are after. Finding the people involved ought to be trivial.”

“Trivial?” M’s voice was colder. “I have a major security breach on my hands and several people are dead, not to mention the fact that I’m likely to have to move house because you aren’t just a security risk, Bond, you’re a fucking liability. I have two drivers, I have guards, there are other people who know this address but none of them have lifestyles that involves getting drunk and passing out in front of complete strangers on a sufficiently regular basis to be bloody well planned for!”

That was one way to look at it, James supposed. He wondered how much it would hurt if he stood up. He’d better give it a try. It hurt a great deal but he was on his feet in time to see M walking away from the bed.

“They could have extracted that information from any of your people,” he pointed out.

“Not without my knowing about it.” M didn’t turn round.

“So you know about it now.” 

M stopped at the bedroom door and glanced back. “I’ve suddenly got a great deal of urgent work to do, thanks to you. Get dressed and get out and don’t come back again.” 

The bedroom door shut leaving James, still hissing with pain, alone. There was still some brandy left so he drank it and then dressed awkwardly without sitting down. By the time he was done a blank faced young man with a gun was waiting to escort him slowly and rather painfully off the premises and into the rainsoaked darkness.


	6. Same Mistake Twice

“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to talk to you.” Q didn’t lift his head from the microscope.

“Fortunately I didn’t come here to listen. Is that still working?” James walked up to the desk and peered at the slide.

“Broadcasting loud and clear. I’m about to turn it off permanently.”

“Then I arrived just in time.” James plucked the chip off the microscope and swallowed it. It felt as if it had scraped his throat all the way down.

Q stared at him in shock. “For God’s sake, Bond! It’s not designed to be edible!”

“Many things aren’t. I think I could probably do with a word with your boss now.”

 

M’s voice was deep and calm, which was something of a bad sign. “Well, I can either order your stomach pumped or put you in a cell with a bucket and let nature take its course. Tell me which you’d prefer and I’ll arrange for the other one.”

“Or we can find out if your house has been compromised and catch the people trying to compromise it,” James suggested. “If they don’t have your address yet they must know that the chip will soon reach the end of its life. We can get them to move faster than is wise and in a direction of our choosing.”

M didn’t say anything, which James took as encouragement. “I just need somewhere to hunker down that they can kick me out of without too much collateral and a fake version of your house to run to. I’ll need to borrow your guards and your car to make that look convincing. If nothing happens we’ll know they’ve already got what they wanted. What have you got to lose?

“Apart from the sight of you retching with a tube down your throat?” M sighed. “As if Moneypenny wasn’t busy enough today. Tell her this takes priority. And Bond?”

“Sir?”

“It will take a while to set up. See the medics and get your backside looked at. And get them to give you a couple of pairs of rubber gloves for later while you’re at it. I meant it about getting that chip back.”

 

James' finger was curled around the trigger as the man came round the bathroom door.

“Oh. It’s you.” He hadn’t expected M to be at the mock-up but he supposed that it made sense. The man couldn’t go home after all and his staff were all here.

“That didn’t take long,” M said.

“They’re getting desperate. Time’s running out.” James went back to his hunt for the first aid kit.

M considered the blood on his clothes.“How bad is it?”

“Just a scrape.” A very good shot pretending to be a bad one. If they’d put him in hospital they wouldn’t have got what they wanted. It hurt though. Another thing to chalk up to his planned payback. “One shot through the window and he ran. Fortunately it gave me an excuse to be slow and unobservant on the getaway. They followed me most of the way here.”

“I’ll look at it,” M took the kit from the last of the cabinets “There’s some morphine in here if you need it.”

“I’d rather have whisky,” James suggested.

“Coffee or orange juice. There’s nothing else in the house.”

For a moment James thought it was an off colour joke, then he realised M was serious. “And you expect me to stay here all night? What were you thinking?”

“That I’ve had enough of tiptoeing around your problem, Bond.” M took up the scissors and started to cut the fabric of James’ shirt away from the long burn line.

“I thought my problem was girls?”

“No you didn’t.” He ran a bowl of warm water with a hefty dose of antiseptic.

“Aren’t you being rather sanctimonious for someone with a decanter in his office?” 

He had more to say but M started patting at his burnt skin with cotton wool and he was too busy hissing to finish his sentence.

There was silence while the burn was patched up. James was trying to remember whether he’d passed an all night off-licence on the way to the house. He’d been shot at. Wanting a drink after that was hardly extravagant. He was considering sending one of the security staff out when the young man who had escorted him out the previous night put his head around the door.

“We’ve got something.”

“Not here.” M said. He passed the surgical tape over to James. “You can finish up. I’ll see you in the sitting room when I’m done.”

The sitting room was full of places to sit, none of which were any use to James in his current condition. He propped himself up against the back of an armchair and waited with a great deal of impatience.

“Well?” he asked when M finally came in.

“Not your concern,” M said.

“Those guys just shot me,” he pointed out,

“You’ve done your part and you’re no longer need to know, Bond. Just stay here overnight and you’re done with this.” M looked at James’ face and sighed.

“All right. You told me I’d have to make a decision eventually. I’ve made it. I’m pensioning you off. You’ve done more for your country than anyone else in the Service but I can’t keep you on like this, The terms will be generous; you can go somewhere hot, buy another bar, drink the stock and screw the clientèle as much as you want, but I want you out of the country as soon as this is done.”

“You’re making a serious mistake. I’m the best agent you’ve got.”

“I truly wish there was any doubt about the matter,” M said. “But the Service can’t afford your wreck of a private life.”

James stared at him, aware that most of what he was thinking was how much he really wanted a drink right now.

“Give me six weeks,” he said.

“To do what?”

“To unwreck my private life. I’ll stop drinking.”

M looked at him, “I don’t think you can stop.”

“I just have.” James said. “You can chase me around with a fucking breathalyser if you like. All I’m asking for is the chance to prove it.“

M shook his head slowly. “Even if I thought you could- it’s not enough. In the state you’re in you won’t get through the medical and it’s not optional.”

“Ye of little faith,” James said, a great deal more lightly than he felt. “I’ll get through your physical and your damned psych tests as well. Six weeks, Mallory, and you’ll have a 00 agent instead of a drain on the pension fund.”

“I don’t think so,” M said.

“Sleep on it,” Bond suggested. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”

M rubbed his face, thinking. “You have the leftmost bedroom. Go there now and stay in it. I’m going to post a guard at your door. Nothing’s expected to happen out here tonight and I don’t want you involved even if it does. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

James did not sleep. He couldn’t lie on his back or on the side where he bullet had scraped him and the tension wouldn’t subside. Just a shot, his brain kept telling him. One slug and he’d feel better. He told his brain that it wasn’t getting a fucking drink and lay awake until the light came through the window.

“Non negotiable conditions,” Mallory said briskly over breakfast. “You don’t touch alcohol or any illegal drug at all for the next six weeks and you take a blood test without advance notice every single time you’re told to, night or day. If you haven’t got the willpower to do that then you’ve got no place carrying a gun. And that’s the second condition; no illegally held weapons, no law breaking. You’re going to be a model citizen, Bond. It should be a novel experience for you”

“It sounds dull,” James said honestly.

M shrugged. “You wanted this chance. Join the library. Develop a caffeine habit like the rest of us. Meet some nice girls and experience the novelty of remembering what you did with them next morning.”

James shuddered. “Any more rules?”

“Just one. You will stay away from the office and from Service personnel at all times,” M said. “You’re stretching my staff’s loyalties further than I can tolerate. It was bad enough when you were doing it from inside but I will not have them answering to an outsider and I know damn well how much you screw with them to get what you want.”

He passed over a mug of coffee. “In six weeks time, if the reports I get are unfailingly positive, you’ll get called in for the tests and if you pass those I’ll make a final decision. Until then I don’t even want to be reminded that you exist.”

“Now that’s mixed signals, if you like.” James said. “Still, if your bed’s cold you’ll know where I am.”

“Somewhere else, “ M said. “And staying there. Consider this a restraining order, Bond. If I so much as catch a glimpse of the back of your head in the street the deal’s off.”

“Are you enjoying this, Sir?” James asked.

“No,” M said grimly. “In truth I’d much rather have you marched to the airport this morning and out of here for good. In my view this is just delaying the inevitable and probably not delaying it for very long. I want you to be as little trouble to the Service and to me as possible in the interim. So find yourself somewhere to live, settle down, take the blood tests, forget about Service matters and see if you can at least last the week sober.”

And there really wasn’t anything for James to say after that.

 

James was running (definitely not jogging) back from the gym, dodging people on the sparsely occupied pavements and thinking about lunch when he turned the corner and saw the figure standing outside the entrance to the apartment block.

He slowed to a stop next to the man. “Lost?” he asked.

Q held up the familiar black case. “I’m your designated bloodsucker today. Shall we go in?”

“Third floor,” Inside, James gestured at the lift. “I’ll spare you close proximity until I’ve showered.”

“I’m under instructions to watch you continuously.” Q said. “I’ll join you on the stairs.”

James was tempted to run up then but it wasn’t kind to Q, and besides his legs were starting to ache. They walked up together.

“You’re looking better,” Q said. He sounded slightly surprised. “Fitter.”

“Five weeks with nothing else to do,” James opened the door to his studio flat. “Are you planning to watch me in the shower?”

“I’ll do the blood test first,” Q said, “Save us both embarrassment.” He started to unpack the kit.

“Particularly slow day on the armament front?” James asked.

Q smiled slightly. “I’m on assignment. M wants to know how you’re cheating on the blood tests.” He laid out the needle and vial on the cloth.

“Tell him to go screw himself,” James said. He offered up his arm.

“Mind taking the T shirt off?” Q asked.

James snorted. “There’s nothing up my sleeve.” He stripped down to the waist. “Better?”

“Thank you.” Q attached the elastic and slid the needle fairly competently into the vein in James’ elbow, on top of the mark from previous needles. He filled the vial and snapped it off, tucking it into an inside pocket, before withdrawing the needle.

“Spotted how it’s done yet?” James asked.

Q frowned at him. “Mind if I take a look around the place?”

“Be my guest,” James said. “Look wherever you like. I’ll take that shower.”

When he came out again Q was reading the back of a thriller he’d borrowed from the library and left lying on his bed. “Is this any good?”

James shrugged. “I haven’t worked out who did it yet,which might be good or bad. I’ll tell you if I finish it. Seen all you need to?”

“You’ve really stopped completely?” Q said.

“It seemed like the easiest way to fix the sodding blood tests.” It hadn’t been easy at all but he’d been damned if he was going to let Mallory say I told you so. “How are all things declassified down on the farm?”

Q eyed him and clearly decided that he could say a bit. “The guys who trashed your last place won’t be trashing anything else.”

“Loose ends?”

“All tidied.”

James wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d rather hoped to go after them himself once he was reinstated. On the other hand, anything that stopped M being angry about him was probably for the best. “And how are our mutual friends?”

“Fine. Apparently the boss was absolute hell to work with for a couple of weeks but he’s over the worst of it now.”

“Seems like an overreaction. I’m guessing he didn’t even have to move house in the end.” James said.

“It wasn’t that,” Q said, sounding puzzled. “Haven’t you found yourself a bit bad tempered at times?”

He’d been bloody furious at times, but he didn’t see... and then he did. “He’s stopped drinking?”

“Well yes. I thought that was part of your deal?”

“No,” James said flatly. “He didn’t tell me.” 

“It’s an open secret in the Department,” Q said. “There was a sweepstake on when he’d give it up but most people have lost already.”

James had done his drying out on his own, with only the occasional surprise visit from the needle-bearing medics. He wondered if that was better or worse than coming into work every day to an office sweepstake on his progress,

Q had packed his kit away. “I’m under instructions not to do too much fraternising. Maybe I’ll see you again in a week?” He didn’t sound entirely sure.

“You can count on it,” James told him. “Tell M I look forward to seeing him.”

 

On the desk was a gun, a security pass and a bulging A4 envelope. James considered the last item.

“Assignment?” he asked hopefully.

“Contract of employment,” M said. “Sign one copy and return it to HR. Don’t make them chase you for it for weeks.”

“Any particular terms and conditions I should know about?”

M sighed. “Just don’t make the same mistake twice. Any of them.”

James reached out to take the gun. Sliding it into his waistband, he looked across at M. and wondered if he was expected to say thank you.

“I gather you skipped the blood tests,” he said instead. “How clean would they have been?”

M paused. “Less so than yours,” he admitted. “But then my job didn’t depend on not cheating with the occasional whiskey last thing at night. It’s hard to sleep sometimes, but then I imagine you know that.”

James thought that the weeks of sweaty and tense insomnia probably counted as hard to sleep sometimes, yes, “So you were faking sobriety while sending your minions out to harass me about mine.”

“Your point being?”

That his boss was a hypocritical bastard. It wasn’t worth articulating. “Is that everything?”

“Some of your range scores have dipped significantly. Get that sorted. And you’ve got six months of memos to read. Once you’re back up to scratch I’ll find some work for you.”

James scooped up the paperwork and left. Outside Moneypenny was smiling at him. “Welcome back,” she said. He hoped that his smile in return looked something like genuine.

 

James was balanced uncomfortably on his left forearm lying across the window sill. With his right hand he was very carefully screwing the small device onto the alarm wire. “Strictly Service business” he’d assured Q, and as far as he was concerned it was.

The tiny LED came on and he breathed a sigh, then cut the wire behind the circuit breaker. No alarm. He pushed the window open and rolled through it and onto the tiled corridor floor.

Silence. No lights shone under the doors. He walked quietly to the stairs and looked down at the darkness. The kitchen door was open and the lights off. Last time there had been a bottle of single malt down there; he couldn’t see if it was still on the sideboard. He turned back to the upstairs corridor.

James slid a tiny mike under the bedroom door and put the earphones on. One set of breathing, amplified and steady. He returned the device to an inside pocket and very slowly pushed open the door.

Mallory was asleep, tangled up in the sheets. James took a quick look around the room but there was only a jug of water new from last time. He dipped his fingers into it and flicked a little water onto the man’s cheek.

M woke fast and without flailing, just eyes open and directly focussed.

“What’s your excuse this time?”

“They threw a welcome back party for me on the Section floor,” James said, conversationally.

M propped himself up. “ How charming,” he said dryly. 

“Half a dozen hardened field agents trying to pretend that they were drinking orange juice because they liked the taste? I told them that if anyone pulled a stunt like that again I would waterboard them with the bloody stuff,” James said.

M climbed out of bed and headed naked to the bathroom, flicking the light switch on as he did so. “I don’t recall telling you to drop in any time for a chat,” he said over the noise of urination. “If you think it’s important to tell me how your reintegration is going, request an appointment in writing and I’ll reroute it to HR. Better still just shut up and do the job you claim you can do.”

There was a patch of scarred tissue about the size of James’ palm halfway down the back of Mallory’s right thigh. James could recall how it felt to the touch but he hadn’t asked what had caused it. He hadn’t yet been told to leave, so he didn’t.

“The message seemed to get around,” he said cheerfully. “After that people restricted themselves to just telling me how delighted they were to welcome me back, including a few who I know damn well would have been far happier to hear that I’d drunk myself to death under a bridge somewhere.”

Mallory came back into the bedroom and wrapped himself in a towelling dressing gown before sitting down on the bed. “Get to the point.”

“You gave me my job back because the Service needs me. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the head of the Service is at all pleased to see me back. Professionally I’m a major asset to the Department and you know it. If it had been anyone else you’d have said “welcome back” without a moment’s thought.”

He sat down on the chair opposite Mallory. “So. Do we have a problem, Sir?”

M took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You break into my house at 3am to ask me that question? What the hell did you think the answer was going to be?”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“Why should I do anything?”

“Because for once this is not my screw up, it’s yours. If you hadn’t decided to fuck around with your subordinate your cock wouldn’t be stiffening every time I came into the room and you wouldn’t be overreacting to that by treating me as the Service pariah. You and I have a problem and I want it fixed. There are few enough people that I can rely on.”

“Being an 00 agent doesn’t make you immune to charges of insubordination,” M’s voice was acidic.

“That’s one of the two reasons why we’re not having this conversation in your office, Sir,” James said.

“And the other?”

“Your office doesn’t have a bed.”

Mallory was watching him with half closed eyes. “I didn’t think you made a habit of coming back for seconds.”

“Once drunk and once sober?” James suggested. “After that we could put it up for renegotiation.”

“I’m the Head of the Service. I’m not supposed to negotiate with my subordinates.”

James smiled at that. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

"For a man supposedly addicted to casual sex you're coming across as rather intense about this particular fuck," Mallory commented.

"I told you that I'd rather not have ongoing issues with my boss. I'm sure I could come up with other solutions if necessary but this one is most likely to be entertaining. Even sober." James thought about that for a second. "Especially sober." 

“You make a good case,” M conceded. “Even if I don;’t believe the half of it.”

“Does that matter?”

“Probably not.” He stood up and took a couple of steps so that he was standing in front of James. “Very well, then. Convince me that I wouldn’t prefer you to be in Bermuda.” 

“With pleasure,” James said and he reached out to tug the dressing gown cord loose.

 

Sober did indeed make for better sex, every sensation sharper. Fitter was better too, James thought. He had his back against the textured wallpaper, his legs wrapped around Mallory’s back and his hands interlaced tight around the back of the man’s neck. It wasn’t a particularly stable or elegant position from his point of view but Mallory had been taking full advantage of it for a good ten minutes now and showed no sign of coming to any premature conclusion. 

Not that James was complaining. He liked being fucked hard and deep; it didn't happen often and there wasn't anything directly comparable to the sensation. If he was fairly sure that his aching thighs were going to give up soon at least it hadn't happened yet, and he would prefer not to be the one who opted for the comfort of being horizontal. Mallory’s forearms were flat against the wall so that his hands were wedged under James' shoulders and he was pretty sure that they must be aching hellishly as well. 

For a while there was no sound but their uneven panting. Then Mallory refocused on his face. "Bed?" 

He thought about stringing his small victory out but the comfort level was declining by the second. "Bed." he agreed. 

Mallory heaved him across the couple of paces to land inelegantly on his back on the coverlet. He waited, legs apart, for the man to come in and finish what he'd started but instead Mallory flopped down by his side. 

"Coffee break?" James asked. 

"Cramp," Mallory responded. He had his fingers tight around his shoulder. 

"Here," James rolled up onto his knees. He could feel the muscle over-tight under his fingers, under the rough gunshot scarring. He pushed the shoulder gently outwards and Mallory hissed. 

"Doesn't the SAS have procedures for dealing with cramp during critical and delicate operations? 

"Oh yes,' Mallory said through gritted teeth. "We shoot anyone who laughs. That's better. Ten seconds and repeat twice." 

It was both amusing and achingly frustrating. James decided that he couldn't wait for recovery. "Fortunately stepping in to other peoples crises is basically my job description." He switched to keeping pressure on the shoulder with one hand and reached down with the other to take an equally firm grip on Mallory’s barely faltering erection.

"You think I should just lie back and... Jesus! " 

"Exactly. Put that alpha male stuff on the back burner for a while and take advantage of your partner's skillset."

"You are, as usual, worryingly plausible. Shift around a bit though. I have one hand free and I'm not entirely useless. "

James shifted into reach, grinning. "Now that I never thought of you for a moment."

 

"Don't fall out of my window on your way home." Mallory was sitting on the bed watching him dress. 

James hadn't really expected an invite to breakfast. "I appreciate your concern for my safety."

"You leave a trail of difficult paperwork everywhere you go. I expect your eventual demise will be particularly troublesome in that respect and I don't want it to be in my back garden."

"Noted." James fastened his belt and went searching for his missing shoe under the bed. 

As he was leaving M said. "007?"

"Sir?"

"Check in with Moneypenny tomorrow afternoon. I might have a job for you, provided that your other skillsets aren't completely atrophied. And welcome back." 

James nodded and left the bedroom. He was still smiling as he negotiated the window and climbed down to the silent garden. 

Dawn was breaking red in the East, faint against the street lights as he took the stairs up to his flat. It had been a long night. If anyone wanted him before lunchtime tomorrow they could call him in. Thinking of that reminded him of blood tests, now superfluous. 

James sat by the window and watched the empty streets slowly fill underneath him. The glass was already empty; the bottle had only been a whisky miniature from a hotel minibar. He hadn’t been incautious enough to keep anything else in the flat while he had to stay sober. 

The taste had been raw and the hit shortlived but it had been enough to prove the point. Of course he would drink and function. He just wouldn’t drink as much as before. He didn’t make the same mistake twice. Tugging the blind closed, he left London waking and went to bed.


End file.
